By Jessica Winter January 13, 2004

In 1985, British mountaineers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates scaled the 21,000-foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, becoming the first men to climb the unclimbable west face to its summit. And then things got really interesting. On the descent, Simpson, then 25 years old, suffered a fall that drove his lower leg through his knee; when Simpson fell again later that day, some 150 feet into the black yawn of a crevasse, 21-year-old Yates gave up his friend for dead. But Simpson was, to his own surprise, very much alive. He had to find a way out of the ice-wall fissure and then negotiate the steep piles of moraines and boulders that stood for six miles between him and camp. He had no food or water, no partner, and a useless tree-trunk of excruciating pain conductors where his right leg had been.... More >>>